For the record: our British National health Service DOES work! It has NOT failed!! (Any government foolish enough to let it do so would be banished forever, because OUR N.H.S. is a national institution!)

There have always been problem areas, and always will be. The media feeds on such things, but some of us live in the real world!

Any of us can visit our G.P. with any complaint, whenever we need to and either be treated by him/her, or be referred by him/her to a specialist at a hospital. Having had two referral operations (knee cartilage removal, cancer removal) I can vouch for its efficiency and speed of action in serious cases.

In fact, our system is so desirable that National Health Tourism has become a problem. (Those from other countries obtaining free treatment here which would not be available without paying in their own country.)

Of course our system is expensive, very much so, and of course we always grumble about it because that's our national pastime (especially the weather), but I've never met anybody who can think of a better system!

From the National Center for Policy Analysis:
Medical care in the United States is derided as miserable compared to health care systems in the rest of the developed world. Economists, government officials, insurers and academics alike are beating the drum for a far larger government rôle in health care. Much of the public assumes their arguments are sound because the calls for change are so ubiquitous and the topic so complex. However, before turning to government as the solution, some unheralded facts about America's health care system should be considered.

Fact No. 1: Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers.[1] Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States, and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher in the U.K. and 457 percent higher in Norway. The mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40 percent higher.

Fact No. 2: Americans have lower cancer mortality rates than Canadians.[2] Breast cancer mortality is 9 percent higher, prostate cancer is 184 percent higher and colon cancer mortality among men is about 10 percent higher than in the United States.

Fact No. 3: Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than patients in other developed countries.[3] Some 56 percent of Americans who could benefit are taking statins, which reduce cholesterol and protect against heart disease. By comparison, of those patients who could benefit from these drugs, only 36 percent of the Dutch, 29 percent of the Swiss, 26 percent of Germans, 23 percent of Britons and 17 percent of Italians receive them.

Fact No. 4: Americans have better access to preventive cancer screening than Canadians.[4] Take the proportion of the appropriate-age population groups who have received recommended tests for breast, cervical, prostate and colon cancer:
* Nine of 10 middle-aged American women (89 percent) have had a mammogram, compared to less than three-fourths of Canadians (72 percent).
* Nearly all American women (96 percent) have had a pap smear, compared to less than 90 percent of Canadians.
* More than half of American men (54 percent) have had a PSA test, compared to less than 1 in 6 Canadians (16 percent).
* Nearly one-third of Americans (30 percent) have had a colonoscopy, compared with less than 1 in 20 Canadians (5 percent).

Fact No. 5: Lower income Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians. Twice as many American seniors with below-median incomes self-report "excellent" health compared to Canadian seniors (11.7 percent versus 5.8 percent). Conversely, white Canadian young adults with below-median incomes are 20 percent more likely than lower income Americans to describe their health as "fair or poor."[5]

Fact No. 6: Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the U.K. Canadian and British patients wait about twice as long - sometimes more than a year - to see a specialist, to have elective surgery like hip replacements or to get radiation treatment for cancer.[6] All told, 827,429 people are waiting for some type of procedure in Canada.[7] In England, nearly 1.8 million people are waiting for a hospital admission or outpatient treatment.[8]

[I phone specialists directly and get in within a few days if my problem is not urgent. I consulted about 8 specialists in several weeks regarding my prostate cancer.]

Fact No. 7: People in countries with more government control of health care are highly dissatisfied and believe reform is needed. More than 70 percent of German, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and British adults say their health system needs either "fundamental change" or "complete rebuilding."[9]

Fact No. 8: Americans are more satisfied with the care they receive than Canadians. When asked about their own health care instead of the "health care system," more than half of Americans (51.3 percent) are very satisfied with their health care services, compared to only 41.5 percent of Canadians; a lower proportion of Americans are dissatisfied (6.8 percent) than Canadians (8.5 percent).[10]

Fact No. 9: Americans have much better access to important new technologies like medical imaging than patients in Canada or the U.K. Maligned as a waste by economists and policymakers naïve to actual medical practice, an overwhelming majority of leading American physicians identified computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as the most important medical innovations for improving patient care during the previous decade.[11] [See the table.] The United States has 34 CT scanners per million Americans, compared to 12 in Canada and eight in Britain. The United States has nearly 27 MRI machines per million compared to about 6 per million in Canada and Britain.[12]

Fact No. 10: Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations.[13] The top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other single developed country.[14] Since the mid-1970s, the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology has gone to American residents more often than recipients from all other countries combined.[15] In only five of the past 34 years did a scientist living in America not win or share in the prize. Most important recent medical innovations were developed in the United States.[16] [See the table.]

Conclusion. Despite serious challenges, such as escalating costs and the uninsured, the U.S. health care system compares favorably to those in other developed countries.

Last edited by isobars on Sat Feb 25, 2012 11:21 am; edited 1 time in total

queue in iso's horror stories to demonstrate to you that you have no idea what you are talking about. clearly, you should use his sources which are the only acceptable facts, rather than contradict his words with personal experience and "opinions"!
repeat after me: socialized medecine is evil, and anyone pretending otherwise is a GD marxist.

I'm a little baffled! If Iso's system is so superior to the rest of the worlds, why is there so much anguish and argument about how to change it?
Could there perhaps be an element of lies, damned lies, and statistics in his argument.

Iso gets his nonsense from sources that think as he does.
The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) is a non-profit American conservative think tank whose goals are to develop and promote private alternatives to government regulation and control. Topics addressed include reforms in health care, taxes, Social Security, welfare, education and environmental regulation._________________mo

I'm a little baffled! If Iso's system is so superior to the rest of the worlds, why is there so much anguish and argument about how to change it?

Simple: most U.S. citizens loathe socialism and Markism, love freedom; the other group, most of whom have never heard of the Congressional Budget Office, actually believe Obamacare is fiscally feasible.

Could there perhaps be an element of lies, damned lies, and statistics in his argument.

Of COURSE! Why wouldn't the National Center for Policy Analysis be lying through their teeth? After all, the proof of that seems to be that it disagrees with your opinion. Never mind that many of its statistics concur with (i.e., come from) many official and medical and government sources. Besides, those evil KOCH brothers contribute some money to it, so it has to be fraudulent, right? And of course my cancer pt friends from all over the world are all wrong, too.

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